


thistledown, my darling

by GodmotherToClarion



Category: Free!
Genre: Fantasy, First Meetings, Forests, Haru heals plants by touching them, Human Makoto, Illustrated, M/M, Makoto can't keep them alive, Nymphs & Dryads, dryad prince Haru, reupload, with added epilogue!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-27
Updated: 2018-11-27
Packaged: 2019-09-01 05:06:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16758514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GodmotherToClarion/pseuds/GodmotherToClarion
Summary: "Such is the thrall of the Fae, sweetheart. I never so much as touched your father with a spell, and still on the night we met he swore his life to me."In which a half-mortal dryad prince meets a human boy, and learns a love for the ages.





	thistledown, my darling

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 2018 Makoharu Flash Bang! A huge thanks to the mods for running this event, and to the amazing daikamine for partnering with me <3 her beautiful illustration for this fic can be found [here](http://daikimine.tumblr.com/post/180498083758/illustration-for-thistledown-my-darling-by) at her tumblr!

Long ago in the Forest Ailsa (or so the woodmen said) a blacksmith’s son had wandered far from his home in search of kindling for his father’s forge. He came when twigs and boughs alike were damp and green to the bark, and so he went further than he was obliged to do in autumn. It was thus that he came to the heart of the wood, and weary with his burden he lay against an aspen-tree and fell into heavy slumber.

In the village they never knew what befell him there, only that he did not return for many days, and when he did they found him greatly changed. He fled back into the forest whenever he had a morning to himself, vanishing for hours at a time before running back with his mouth turned up in a grin. His parents knew naught of his doings there, but the townsfolk guessed that he had run across some fey creature in the woods: a sprite in the shape of a woman, whom some of the villagers claimed to have seen in the trees by twilight.

At last the youth took his leave from the settlement and never returned again, gone to make his home in the green with whatever it was that so bespelled him. His family made nothing of his departure, and the townsfolk grew ever surer that he had met a faerie girl and taken her to wife―and by her had a son, quitting his kin to raise the child where it might be protected. It was true, if they had but known it; but by and by the boy was wholly forgotten, and now a bustling city stood where his settlement used to lie. But the forest was hale and living still, and so was the halfblood fairy-child in the thriving heart of the wood.

His mother called him Haruka, for the sweet breath of spring on the day she first laid eyes on his father. He had his father’s hair, thick and black like water by night, and his eyes were his mother’s: sweet and fair and blue as the heavens from the centuries he had passed beneath them. When he grew to manhood he found his human shape better suited for his power, and so he took the form of a mortal boy. None of his _amai’s_ folk could follow in his footsteps, and so Haru was left to himself with birds and beasts for company. They spoke to him as they would to their own, but he took his greatest happiness healing the aged trees of their hurts whenever they called for aid.

At first he had gone through the forest unclothed, but at his mother’s urging he fashioned himself a shift from a bed of fallen oak-leaves. It covered him now from knees to shoulders, bound by a belt of blackberry brambles stripped of their needling thorns; his mother had laughed at the sight of it, certain that he would bewitch any maiden who happened to cross his path. But pleasing though he was to look upon no maiden had caught his eye; he wore his tresses loose and unbound to see them tangle in the breeze, and not to pay court to the dryad-girls whose friendship he held so dear. Of late his _apai’s_ human blood had grown ever stronger in his limbs, and now he thought if love should come it might return him to the bustling realm his father once called home.

But beyond the Forest Ailsa the world of men was changed, and it was this that startled Haru so when he found himself drawn out to the edge of the wood one night, for his mother’s dryads stood watch by the cedars there and kept them green and firm. As he looked about he found nothing amiss, and yet the fragrance of wounded leaves beckoned him down the gully to the sparkling city below.

“Do you wish to go out, Haru-chan?”

He turned and saw a slender osier fanning her limbs in the wind, laughing as he pointed to a little house that glowed from within like the moon. Mortals could not see in the dark, or so his father had said, and since his _apai’s_ death Haru had dearly missed the warm golden light he made with sticks in the underbrush to ease his work in the evenings.

“Go, then,” smiled the osier, lifting the veil to let him slip out beneath it. For a while he stood and wondered at the scent of the late spring air, finding it sharper than what he was used to in the wood, but then he rose and made his way to the cottage he saw from the Ailsa’s border. Though the air was chill he felt nothing, and careless of the breeze on his arms he walked down the lane until he came to a garden filled with roses growing unchecked and ivy lining the walls.

“You do not need my care, I think,” he chuckled, kissing a crimson bloom as he passed. “Where am I called for, then?”

The rose directed him to the nearest window, where the sun-colored warmth lay fair and unfaltering before a pane of glass. Set against the sill was a row of earthen pots, painted in cheery colors by a careful and loving hand; some bore the portraits of stars and planets, while others were pink and scarlet like a cherry tree in blossom.

“Mortals keep seedlings indoors,” laughed Haru, pressing his nose to the window-frame. “How funny! I have never seen shrubs like these, with thorns on their petals and silken-smooth at the stems. They are black, too―are they meant to be so?”

_Foolish little halfling,_ said the ivy kindly. _Our keeper minds us faithfully, but for the life of him he cannot manage those plants within. They come from a barren wasteland, and he waters them far too often to keep them well._

“How curious,” he mused, standing on his toes to undo the latch. Once it was open he pushed back the glass and passed his gaze from wall to wall, searching the place for flowers until―

“ _Oh,_ ” he gasped, clutching at his breast as he glimpsed a bed draped in white. Upon it a boy lay slumbering with his long hands folded on his chest, breathing at ease as he dreamed like a child in its mother’s arms. His skin was the hue of light made solid, as if it were colored by the fiery lamp or by the heavens at sunrise, and the locks on his head were the color of rain-damp sand: soft and brown like sugarcane made into drinking-syrup. At the sight of him a ruddy flush crept into Haru’s neck, and forgetting the plants entirely he pulled himself nearer to brush the gentle face.

The young man woke at the touch and smiled, unveiling a pair of eyes as fair as any fae’s; it seemed he still thought himself sleeping, for he did not move at all as Haru slipped away and passed his hands over the shrubs near the windowsill. They flushed and brightened at once, and finished with his work the half-dryad fell back to the grass below. At the sound of the ivy’s snorting he turned and fled like the wind, only daring to look back when he came to the lane by the gate. The boy had risen from his bed, and now he sat staring into the night with a puzzled frown on his brow. He bent down and looked at his desert-plants renewed, breaking the hush with a cry of joy as he saw them living again.

“Thank you,” he called, leaning out over the open frame with his emerald eyes alight. At the sound of his voice Haru stilled and pressed his lips together, fighting a sudden smile as the lad withdrew and shut the window behind him.

But eager though he was to depart Haruka saw that the pane had been left unlatched as if to give him the promise that it would remain so, and as he flew back to the Ailsa he thought of the name he had read in the mortal’s dreams and the laughing roses in the garden. It was a goodly name, he thought, and fitting for one who loved all things fresh and growing though he had no power of his own. _Truth,_ the ivy had called him, and cradling the word between his palms like a lily’s bud he lifted the forest veil and vanished back into the gloom. In the city below Truth’s cottage was lighted still, though nothing this side of the wood could sway the half-faerie to forget where it lay. Perhaps some night the plants by the window would call to Haru again, and perhaps when he returned Truth would wish to see him.

With that he smiled and went to lie beneath his mother’s aspen-tree, taking his rest in a starlit vision of roses and leaf-green laughter.

* * *

_In the Ailsa they sing of a dryad born to a mortal blacksmith and a fairy queen, who loved a son of men but could not cast off his powers to live beside him. But though he never once left the trees again the house in the valley was for ever veiled in green, and one night when the boy's parents returned they found him sleeping beside a blue-eyed baby who did not cry as other children did, or mind the prick of blackberry thorns upon her tiny fingers. To their bewilderment the youth could give no answer for her presence; he never once spoke of the baby's mother, but still the child was his beyond doubt—she had his wild hair and the light in his laughter exactly, and it was no great wonder when one day he took his daughter and vanished into the wood, returning to the fae who had borne him a joy beyond measure and taken his heart in her place._   
  
_"Were you mortal once, Papa?"_   
  
_"I was, sweetheart. But I do not think I could have remained away from the woods once I had met your father, and after you came to us I knew the world of men did not need me, my daughter. When you were born your apai sent you to live with me beyond the veil, so that you might be brought up like the other children—but though you were less than half a dryad he forged you from his brightest magic, and the moment I saw its traces in your eyes I brought you back to the Ailsa." </i>_   
  
_"And then?"_   
  
_"Have you not heard the tale a hundred times, my laurel?" laughed Haru, bending to kiss the little girl's cheek as she turned up her tiny nose. "That night he ate of the blessed fruits that grew by my mother's throne, and the next full moon he became a dryad as wise and fair as you."_

**Author's Note:**

> come find me on tumblr at @godmothertoclarion!!


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